Friday, February 27, 2009

Have you run into an organization that is attempting too many digitization projects/programs at the same time? Perhaps making individual decisions for each project and not stopping to make global decisions?

Yeah...we've all heard of one organization like this.

The solution? Somehow get the organization to stop and plan. Maybe the solution isn't to scream "we must plan", but to ask questions about resource allocations that might get the organization to consider those things that would go into a plan. Even a few hours spent talking about goals, objectives, tasks, resources, etc. can be worthwhile and ensure that the organization makes good decisions about what it is trying to do. The resultant documentation doesn't have to be formal, but it should be written down and agreed to.

Yes, plans can change. And if the plan is in writing, it is easier to know (and document) what is changing.

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Today I made my second trip to Albany as a member of the Regents Advisory Council on Libraries in order to visit NY State Legislators. Members of the Council along with Regent James Dawson, State Librarian Bernard Margolis, Deputy Commissioner for Cultural Education Jeffrey W. Cannell, and others from the State Library and Department of Education visited 17 members of the Assembly and State Senate. I met with:

During one of the meetings, someone used the phrase "Tin Cup Tuesday" to describe lobby day. Indeed many groups come to Albany on Tuesdays to meet with members of the legislature in order to advocate for their causes. Given the economic crisis, many groups are descending on Albany in hopes of keeping their funding.

In our meetings, we talked about the 18% proposed cut to library funding and the negative impact it will have on public libraries, public library systems, school libraries, etc. Because of the way the cut will implemented, some organizations may actually have a 30% cut in state funding. An 18 - 30% cut in funding will be devastating and it is anticipated that some library organizations will not survive.

We heard that our representatives want to restore funding to libraries but, with limited funds, they are unsure where the money will come from. Several mentioned the stimulus package and are hoping that there is flexibility in that package that would allow funds to flow to libraries in some manner. No one, though, had seen the details of the package and so what we heard was speculation.

The good news is that everyone understands that the importance of libraries, especially in this economy. Libraries are a haven for those whose have limited funds. These people are using libraries for locating information, borrowing materials for education and entertainment, accessing the Internet, and submitting job applications (which often need to be done online now). Libraries are busier than ever, so any decrease in funding seems inappropriate.

It was said that libraries are places of optimism. If libraries fail, what public institution will provide the optimism and hope that people need?

One person impressed upon us that they -- our legislators -- need to hear from the users of our libraries. Those people need to email, call, or visit members of the Assembly and Senate and tell them how important libraries are, and ask for full funding to be restored. The voices of our users must be loud, if not deafening. And their voices need to be heard soon.

In addition, the funding stream for the State Library, Museum and Archive has been decimated, and we talked about how that could be rectified. Currently, the majority of funding comes from fees collected on specific recordings and filings done through county clerks (e.g., deeds). The Regents will be proposing the fee can be increased from $15/filing to $22.50.

On March 10, hundreds of library workers, librarians and library supporters will descend on Albany. By then, the legislators should know much more about the stimulus package. Let's hope that the message delivered by the legislators on March 10 is that library funding will be restored.

If you have been following this blog for a while, then you know that I periodically create a resource list for use with my workshops, and then publish it to this blog. I've just updated the resource list (now called Digitization 101 Resource List). Beside the link in this post, there is also a link in the left side of this blog.

While this resource list contains a wealth of information, it is not meant to be all inclusive. Instead think of it as a starter list to get you going. And the list does not contain any information on equipment vendors or outsources services -- that's very much on purpose, since including that information would change the goal of this resource list.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Other bloggers will recognize this problem. You start a blog post, save it, and then forget about it. Below is information that came to my attention last June and which became "buried" (partial completed and never published).

On the JISC web site are a list of digitization projects that they are currently funding (see http://www.jisc.ac.uk/digitisation -- you may have to scroll down a bit to see the list). Each project that is currently in Phrase 2 " links to its own page with information about the project and the project plan" (quoting the person who emailed me last June). If you are more visual person, you can look at the posters for many of the projects and see images from the projects along with explanatory text (marketing material).

It looks like the current project work/funding ends in March 2009. I hope that all of the projects has acquired funding to ensure their sustainability.

Following the success of DigCCurr2007, the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina is pleased to announce our second digital curation curriculum symposium. DigCCurr 2009: Digital Curation Practice, Promise and Prospects is part of the Preserving Access to Our Digital Future: Building an International Digital Curation Curriculum (DigCCurr) project.

DigCCurr 2009 will host over 100 speakers from a dozen countries. Keynoter, John Wilkin from the University of Michigan will lead us off with a presentation entitled: “Building the Universal Library: The promise and challenges of HathiTrust.” This will be followed by two days of papers, panels, digital curation tool demonstrations, poster presentations, receptions and a conference dinner. Speakers will report on best practices, current experiences, and tools available for digital curation tasks today. DigCCurr2009 will focus on current practice and research surrounding digital curation with a look toward the future, and trends in preparing digital curation professionals. Day 1 session titles include:

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

I mention the Deed of Gift form in every digitization workshop that I give. The Deed of Gift form is what an institution uses to know:

What is being donated to the institution

Who is giving the donation

What rights the institution is being given (e.g., copyright)

The provenance of the items

Every institution has received gifts without any accompanying documentation. In those instances, the institution has no idea what it really owns and what it can do with it. A well thought out Deed of Gift form takes the mystery out of a donation. Now the institution understands what items have been donated and what it might do with them.

There are not too many examples of good Deed of Gift forms on the Internet; however, the form available from the Navarro College Archives is a very good example this form is a good example -- http://blog.lib.umn.edu/extmedia/centennial/assets/deedofgift.pdf. In fact, it likely has sections in it (e.g., appraisal value) that others might not have. Notice that it asks that the donor consider giving the archive copyright to items where the donor controls the copyright. If the archive is going to digitize the materials, it needs to have this. (Updated 4/3/2009)

The Society of American Archivists has a web page that explains the Deed of Gift form to potential donors. If you are creating or modifying your Deed of Gift form, you may want to consult this page in order to read SAA's information.

If you have taken in recent donations without a Deed of Gift, consider going back and asking for one. Tell the donor that this paperwork will help to ensure that there are no questions (or problems) in the future. In addition, if you have a valuable donation without proper documentation and you can find the donor (or the donor's heirs), consider working to get a Deed of Gift completed. Doing so could be helpful to you and to your successors.

When you digitize materials, you are doing so in order to increase access. We often hope that digitization will also lessen handling on some of our hardcopy materials. But if digitization doesn't lessen their handling, why not make hardcopy surrogates from the digital assets?

In the 1990s, digitization was done at a Vatican library of extremely old materials that were still in use. After being digitized, hardcopy surrogates were made that looked exactly like the originals and those surrogates were places on the shelf. The originals were then placed in an archive.

Another library digitized a book and created many hardcopy surrogates that they sold as a fundraiser.

Could you be making hardcopy surrogates from your digital assets? If yes, what would you do with them? What benefits would your institution derive from them? Something to consider...

This survey is intended for library, archives and museum specialists, as well as anyone interested in preserving documentary heritage.

Through its Memory of the World programme, UNESCO aims to promote preservation of, and disseminate information regarding, documentary heritage found in archival holdings and library and museum collections worldwide. The Programme includes national / regional committees, which help to initiate and support nominations within their respective regions.

The Memory of the World Registers list documentary heritage of recognized world significance assessed on the basis of specific criteria outlined in the UNESCO Memory of the World General guidelines to safeguard documentary heritage.

The purpose of this survey is to increase and assess awareness of the Programme and to encourage nominations to the Memory of the World Registers. UNESCO hopes to use feedback from this survey to further develop the Memory of the World Programme.

DigitalPreservationEurope (DPE), Preservation and Long-term Access through Networked Services (Planets), Cultural, Artistic and Scientific knowledge for Preservation, Access and Retrieval (CASPAR) and Network of expertise in Digital long-term preservation (nestor) are delighted to announce that they will be delivering the latest in a series of collaborative training initiatives to introduce the Preservation Challenges. This event will be held in Barcelona, Spain from March 23-27 2009. This event is being organised in cooperation with the 'WePreserve' Forum.

Benefits of AttendanceParticipation in the workshop will give participants an awareness and understanding of the key digital preservation issues and challenges and an understanding of the reference model for Open Archival Information System (OAIS). It will also provide participants with knowledge of the role and use of metadata and representation information needed for preservation, the preservation planning process and its benefits to overall digital preservation strategies, and an appreciation of the range of roles and responsibilities involved with digital preservation activities.

These concepts will be illustrated by the practical application of tools developed by DPE, Planets and CASPAR, the major European projects on preservation. There will also be a number of brief break out sessions where the participants, divided in small groups, will have the opportunity to review and discuss among them the topics presented during the lectures, with the assistance and the guidance of the presenters themselves.

FormatInternationally established lecturers will assist attendees in understanding the main concepts of digital preservation and how to address them in practice through a number of hands-on exercises. Students will be provided with access to online course materials relating to the topics that will be discussed both prior to and following the training event.

ProgrammeThis intensive training programme will consist of three days access to online pre-course training, fourteen sessions in a face to face setting, a WePreserve Forum and access to three days of on-line post-course training.

Expert lecturers will lead each session and most will be available through the whole week for further discussion.

Course Fees and Registration:For members of the DPE User Community, CASPAR User Community and WePreserve Consortium members - 150 Euros All other participants - 250 Euros.For more information and to register for this event please visithttp://www.wepreserve.eu/events/barcelona-2009/

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Thanks to DigitalKoans for pointing this out. The American Libraries Association (ALA) has created a Section 108 Spinner that helps libraries and archives to understand if they can copy or digitize an item using the limitations provided in Section 108. Due to how Section 108 is written, anything that helps to make it intelligible is a benefit! This tools is definitely worth bookmarking.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Below is the official press release about Google settlement, as received today in email, concerning its Book Search program (emphasis added).NEW YORK, Feb. 11 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Court-ordered process of officially notifying authors, publishers, and other copyright-holders about the landmark Google Book Search class-action settlement is underway.

Authors and publishers throughout the world are receiving detailed information about their legal rights and options by email and postal mail. A Summary Notice is being published in 218 countries and 72 languages, which complements the mailed notice program. Class members should visit http://www.googlebooksettlement.com for complete information, including the Notice of Class Action Settlement, and key dates.

The Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers, and Google announced the proposed settlement in late October 2008. The settlement, if Court-approved, will authorize Google to scan in-copyright Books and Inserts in the United States, maintain an electronic database of Books, and make various uses of the Books as specified in the settlement. For out-of-print Books and, if permitted by Rightsholders of in-print Books, Google will be able to sell access to individual Books and institutional subscriptions to the database, place advertisements on any page dedicated to a Book, and make other commercial uses of Books. At any time, Rightsholders can change instructions to Google regarding any of those uses. Through a Book Rights Registry ("Registry") established by the settlement, Google will pay Rightsholders 63% of all revenues from these uses. The settlement also provides for cash payments to Rightsholders of Books and Inserts that Google scans prior to May 5, 2009.

Class members' rights may be affected by the settlement even if they do not act. Those who wish to opt out of or object to the settlement must do so by May 5, 2009. Claims for cash payments for Books and Inserts scanned by May 5, 2009 must be filed by January 5, 2010. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York will consider whether to grant final approval of the settlement at a hearing on June 11, 2009.

About the Open Repositories Conference Repositories increasingly play a pivotal role in the emerging information landscape. Through the format of blending open user group meetings for DSpace, Fedora, and Eprints, followed by general conference sessions that cover cross-cutting and overarching issues, Open Repositories attempts to create an opportunity to explore the challenges faced by user communities and others in today's world.

Repositories are being deployed in a variety of environments (education, research, science, cultural heritage) and contexts (national, regional, institutional, project, lab, personal). Regardless of setting, context or scale, repositories are increasingly expected to operate across administrative and disciplinary boundaries and to interact with distributed computational services and social communities. It is the aim of the Open Repositories Conference to bring together individuals and organizationsresponsible for the conception, development, implementation and management of digital repositories, as well as stakeholders who interact with them, to address theoretical, practical, and strategic issues.

The many repository platforms available today are changing the nature of scholarly communication. Institutions such as universities, research laboratories, publishers, libraries, and commercial organizations are creating innovative repository-based systems that address the entire lifecycle of information-from supporting the creation and management of digital content, to enabling use, re-use, and interconnection of information, to ultimately ensuring long-term preservation and archiving.

Friday, February 06, 2009

I realized last night that I had not written any notes on this conference call, which occurred a week ago. As you can imagine, we spent a lot of time talking about the financial situation facing libraries within New York State. As it stands now, the State budget for 2009-2010, as proposed by the Governor, does include $18 million in cuts for libraries. Those cuts would impact public libraries, library systems, and other organizations that provide services to libraries (who then provide services to everyone in NYS). For some, the cut could be a decrease 20-30% of their funding from the State. These cuts could be devastating and we know of libraries that are already cutting staff, service hours, etc. We also know that public libraries are serving more users, who are turning to the library during our economic downturn, so these cuts are coming at the worst time. (And no, there isn't a good time for cutting library budgets.)

So with library budgets firmly in mind...

On Feb. 24, members of the Regents Advisory Council on Libraries and others, including Regent James Dawson and new State Librarian Bernard (Bernie) Margolis, will be visiting legislators in order to advocate for our libraries.

On March 10, librarians, library workers, and library supporters from across New York State will converge on Albany to visit legislators and lobby for our libraries. (The March 10th event is organized by NYLA.)

We hope that other library supports will visit their legislators, write to them or call them and deliver the message that our libraries need to be adequately funded in order to survive.

Our libraries are part of the education system in our communities. Our libraries...

provide information to for-profit and not-for-profit businesses who need that information in order to be competitive.

provide information for job seekers as well as those who are trying to live the American dream.

are at the center of our communities and we cannot let them disappear.

If you have questions about how to advocate for libraries within New York State, please contact your public library or any of the 3R Councils.

Wednesday, February 04, 2009

As walked through O'Hare Airport last night (after the Digitization Symposium), this ad caught my attention. We -- both people and institutions -- often play it safe when we need to be risk takers. WE forget that taking risks is a part of living.

Yesterday Roy Tennant and I spoke at the North Suburban Library System Digitization Symposium. This one-day event was for those who are considering a digitization program as well as those who have already begun one. Besides talks by Roy and I, six organizations gave overviews of their digitization efforts:

Lake Forest Academy

Schaumburg Township District Library

Northwestern University

Lake County Discovery Museum

Cook Memorial Library

Arlington Hts. Historical Museum

Roy said that years ago he had felt that the emphasis with digitization really should be on access, but then he was converted into believing that the digital assets had to be high-quality (for preservation purposes). Since the release of Shifting Gears: Gearing Up to Get Into the Flow in 2007, he has gone back to emphasizing access. Roy believes that we need to get materials online quickly in order to improve access to them. Yes, you could digitize everything at a high quality and with painstaking care, but that is slow (something we've proven), so why not go for speed? Indeed some institutions are beginning to this this way.

To be accessible, you must also be findable, so Roy talked about the fact that we have been digitizing materials into silos. Instead we need to:

Do whatever it takes to get our stuff online

Expose your digitized content where people congregate

According to Roy, if we learned nothing else from his talk, that was it.

In the battle between access and preservation, access wins.

No one in cultural heritage organization is throwing away originals, so preserve the originals don't worry about making preservation quality digital objects. Surfacing ignored collections can justify their preservation. And...yes...if we need to, we can go back and digitize materials again.

Roy noted that hand-crafted digitization presentations are largely ignored and urged us to forget "special projects."

Roy said that we should digitize everything. Institutions selected the materials for the collections when they brought them in-house, so don't go through another selection process.

In talking about digitizing everything, he mentioned these strategies:

Capture materials as they are accessioned

Capture on demand

Capture "signposts" and devote more attention as warranted

Of course, one of the bottlenecks is describing the materials and here Roy suggested that we minimally describe materials, so we can get them online more quickly. He also suggested that we use tools that will allow our users to add descriptions. He mentioned a test of this idea that was done by steve.museum.

In the battle between quality and quantity, Ry believes that quantity wins. To him, the perfect has been the enemy of the possible.

Roy said that standards are over-rated. Instead of using best practices and blessed guidelines all the time, use them when necessary. Generally you adhere to standards when you are aiming for interoperability. He specifically mentioned the use of cross-walks when you need your metadata to conform to a standard. (If your metadata doesn't conform normally to a standard, that's okay if it meets your needs.)

Roy talked a lot about placing stuff where it can be found (e.g., Flickr and Wikipedia). Place materials -- or pointers to your materials -- in places that will come up in an Internet search. If someone enters a search and it retrieves your materials, then the user has found it in "two clicks". If the search retrieves a site that points to you, then the user will find your site in "three clicks". The goal is two clicks, but three is okay.

Over dinner on Monday night, Roy told me that his emphasis was going to be on access, so I wouldn't be surprised. Actually I enjoyed the insights that he gave (some of which I have captured here) and the idea of "just doing it". It would have been interesting if we could have intertwined our presentations, because I think there were areas unmentioned where we would have been on the same track. And even though I do talk about following guidelines, best practices, etc., I also tell people that if you're going to do something different, understand why (and the implications), and document your decision.

I agree that we don't have enough digitized materials online. I hope that institutions will think about the implications of digitizing faster, so that they understand the decision. I would encourage institutions to make knowledgeable decisions and be ready to live with them. I would hope that institutions would still learn how to do high-quality digitization and recognize when they still need to produce that type of quality.

By the way, I had two hours in the afternoon to do a mini-version of my digitization workshop. I talked about the four S's:

Scope

Selection

"Scanning" (Conversion)

Sustainability

Two hours was just enough time to hit the highlights, given them things to think about, and give them topics to discuss with others (including their managers). In fact, I received a nice thank-you from someone because I mentioned taking specific ideas, etc., to management.

The photo at the top of this blog post is of Roy demonstrating that we all have the technology to digitize. He used an inexpensive digital camera to capture an image of a magazine page. And while you may say "that's not good enough quality", let's be honest. Many of us read information that is captured in JPEG files all the time. We photograph signage, documentation, etc. and the read it later. Yes, OCR is useful, but not always necessary (we've proven that).

Before you put your digital assets into a content management system (of any kind), understand how you are going to get your stuff back out. Don't just assume that the software will be around forever. Don't assume that "of course" you can get your stuff out without any problems (and the metadata that does along with it). Test it. Using a small sample of your materials, go through the steps to ingest, etc., and then go through the steps to export everything using a format that could be used with another system.

Sunday, February 01, 2009

Monday 9 February to Wednesday 11 February 2009 at the British Library, London

Scientists, historians, writers and IT specialists will come together to address the challenge of organising and preserving personal digital archives at the first ever Digital Lives Research Conference, which will be inaugurated by British Library Chief Executive Dame Lynne Brindley.

The conference will address (i) how libraries and archives can help all people whose lives are becoming increasingly digital -- particularly academics -- to secure, preserve and organise their personal archives of digital photographs, documents, correspondence and multimedia, for themselves and their families; and (ii) the possibility of establishing relationships with providers of online services and social systems technologies.

Topics will range from digital curation and digital preservation to the creation of personal digital archives and their use by historians, biographers and scientists.

Invited Presentations by George Oates, member of founding team at Flickr, Simone Brunozzi of Amazon Web Services and Ian Hughes of IBM

Keynote Presentations by computer scientists Mark Baker of University of Reading, Peter Bentley of University College London, Annamaria Carusi of University of Oxford, Jon Crowcroft of University of Cambridge, Kieron O'Hara of University of Southampton and Dave Taylor of Imperial College London.

Day 3 of the conference will involve the participation of visitors and inhabitants of virtual world Second Life, with the conference broadcast onto the Elucian Islands , the Second Life home of Nature Publishing Group and Macmillan Publishers. There will be a keynote lecture by Timo Hannay, Publishing Director at Nature.com

A presentation on "Life at the Extremes" by polar explorer Ben Saunders

The first day of the conference will focus on the latest approaches to curating digital objects and archives. The second day will look at the development of such archives from the point of view of the creators and researchers, writers, scientists and historians. The third day will offer an overview of life online and digital archives as they are developing at present.

The conference is FREE to attend on the 9 and 11 of February, registration is required as space is limited. There is a registration fee of #35 for 10 February, but WAIVERS ARE AVAILABLE.

About The Digital Lives Research Project The Digital Lives Research Project is led by the British Library and is designed to provide a major pathfinding study of personal digital archives, and is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The project team is drawn from University College London and University of Bristol as well as the British Library itself.

About Me

Jill Hurst-Wahl is an associate professor of practice in the Syracuse University School of Information Studies and the director of both its library and information science & LIS with school media specialization programs. She is a member of the USNY Technology Policy and Practices Council. A former corporate librarian, Jill has always been an advocate for expanding the career opportunities for LIS graduates. Her interests include digitization, digital libraries, copyright, web x.0 and social media.